Wednesday, May 20, 2015

What we're up against

As promised here, it's time for an installment of my take of By the People by Charles Murray, which I am in the process of reading.  The first portion of the book summarizes his take on how we got to where we are today, under the boot heel of a lawless regulatory state.  The book will later get to his prescription for how we can deal with that, which I will get to in later posts.

But for our purposes here in analyzing the so-called and undefinable Benedict Option and perhaps other options to that Option, the first part of the book usefully illustrates just what we, as nominally free people, are up against.  Pace Barack Obama, we should identify the actual enemy in order to develop our strategy. Mr. Murray summarizes that quite well, I think:

To simplify, progressive intellectuals were passionate advocates of rule by disinterested experts led by a strong, unifying leader.  The were in favor of using the state to mold social institutions in the interests of the collective.  

And quoting Woodrow Wilson:

...government is not a machine, but a living thing.  It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life.  It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. ... All that progressives ask or desire is permission -- in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word -- to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle.

Brought to you by the progressive movement


By the People sets out how the progressives put these ideas into practice via the judiciary:  elimination of constitutional limitations on the federal government, enabling use of civil litigation as a tool of wealth transfer for the "collective good", and unleashing the lawless regulatory state.  Mr Murray also sets out why we can't undo those actions directly.

My take from this is that we are up against a progressive movement that believes that the experts and elites ("disinterested", of course) can and ought to use the power of the State to change social institutions for the collective good as they see it.  Worse yet, the progressive movement seems to believe that human nature has evolved -- in the Darwinian sense -- such that the constraints presented by pre-modern documents such as the Constitution, as written and adopted, must also evolve.

And this is why, IMO, the so-called Benedict Option (as best one can understand it) would be useless.  Our progressive regulatory oppressors, or at least the true believers among them, will not accept limits on their ability to mold social institutions in the interests of the collective, even to the extent of leaving small insignificant groups alone.  And arguing merely from "tradition" (as in the weak tea of Dreher's SSM opposition) will be considered irrelevant by the progressives; after all, human nature has evolved, and constitutional liberties are to be interpreted according to the Darwinian principle as a result.

To the extent argument can still be used (which Murray seems to believe will be eventually fruitless -- but I'll see how the rest of the book turns out on that point), it will be essential to apply reason, backed by the knowledge that acting in accordance with reason is consistent with revealed truth and God's nature.

And in a more practical sense, we must say "no".  This will be the topic of the second part of By the People, and I will keep y'all updated as I work through it.





44 comments:

  1. This may in some ways be tangential to this chapter of Murray, but one thing I want to throw out there to which all of his remedies against the State would equally apply is something I might dub the "Pre-legal Shame State".

    It is the submission to this Shame State - "You're not for SSM, you're hateful, you can't come to my party!" - that Dreher assumes on behalf of everyone else that tacitly underpins his BO: because you're like him, terrified of being thought ill of outside the Wizard's Cubby behind his blog, therefore, just as for him, your only hope is the BO.

    But before even legal civil disobedience can effectively occur, pre-legal disobedience against the pre-legal Shame State, on social media or elsewhere, must be an option one is willing to engage, that is, not giving a f*ck about what others think of one's Christian beliefs and telling would-be shamers so to their face - politely of course - not passive-aggressively snarking at them the way a Dreher reflexively does.

    At least half the battlefield lies within this pre-legal Shame State, where the only consequence is social disapprobation and there are legal remedies already available if such disapprobation could be deemed a "hostile work environment" in an employment situation.

    Let's just not confuse merely having to assert ourselves in our new Twitter World with the boot of the State closing in. There is a bunch of territory available for immediate retaking as soon as we simply will.

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    1. Indeed so.

      We will certainly be incapable of putting up any fight against the State if we are unwilling to say "no thank you" to the Shame State.

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  2. And speaking of weak tea, this time on religious liberty, Dreher not only won't say "no", but he won't even take "yes" for an answer, if it is offered by someone with whom he has an axe to grind.


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    1. The only solution Dreher recognizes stops at the book signing desk at B&N first. I think the technical term for such a person is "pimp".

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  3. Today's example of giving in to the progressive movement.

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    1. Just as it's the case that, whatever it then becomes and however egalitarian it will supposed to be if and when traditional marriage admits a whole new category of defining members, marriage will never again be what it was yesterday and always has been, so too when scoutmasters go home from admonishing their young charges "to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight" to lube up for some hot butt sex with their twinks and daddies the Boy Scouts will never again be what they were yesterday and are today. Add in no water gun fighting and they become the Happy Club of America, perhaps, but no longer recognizable as the Boy Scouts.

      Which may be a nostalgic an a historical and a traditional loss, but it also offers a Murrayite opportunity. New, identical, but individually private scouting clubs for boys and youths can be formed and joined without admitting homosexuals, and even collected into jamborees. And at this point, should the issue be pressed, the battle over free association is joined at the most explicit level.

      This is where things admittedly get uncomfortable for traditionalists and conservatives, but only to the extent that they are publicly ashamed to take those alternative steps needed (see also Shame State). This is reallythetrue test of the culture wars, not homosexuality or liberal feminism or any particular thing of that sort, but rather which traditionalists and conservatives are still willing to stand up on their own two feet and make active resistance, and which are instead ultimately just additional whining Rod Drehers.

      This is why Rod Dreher is so valuable: he will always remain the gleaming platinum touchstone of modern conservative decadence and moral decrepitude.

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    2. One of the sick parts of this story is the hollowing out of the Scouts by CEOs on the board who use funding as leverage (while, IMO, gaining goodwill for their businesses from the progressives for doing so). Useful recap here.

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    3. I believe I made this point with respect to the Apple CEO and the Indiana RFRA: progressives picket, protest, Tweet and actively shame others into compliance with what they want; in response, conservatives lament and gripe that things just shouldn't be that way.

      The day one of those firms gets picked up by name by conservative outlets across the board, its executive suite and board get discussed, by name, and conservative protesters start showing up in front of stores and clogging their contact points with angry feedback is when the tide starts to turn.

      Not before, though.

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    4. Here's another thing complicating the BSA thing: the 10th Amendment. To the extent that the 10th is the constitutional fallback position on SSM, why wouldn't it equally apply to the BSA? That is, that San Francisco Scouts can have all the gay scoutmasters they want while Texas forbids them - and also, that a Texas can elect not to join gay SF scoutmasters in a national Jamboree without penalty.

      Given the facts on the ground, I would look at this as the most aggressive and constitutionally logical option available, with withdrawing entirely and forming disparate private groups a second. The problem with the latter is that you'll inevitably run into a problem of opportunism as a predictable number of would be leaders insist that their unique Khaki Scouts model is the best and that everyone else should emulate them. Better, IMO, to preserve the traditional model everywhere our own "quiet Tories" will actually elect to do so.

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    5. More on Robert Gates and the Boy Scouts. Pull quotes:

      Gates, whose likeness appears in Webster’s with the entry for “bureaucrat,” says that the Boy Scouts’ policy on homosexuals is “unsustainable.” He warns that attempting to maintain it would mean “the end of us as a national movement.” This sentiment expresses a great deal of what is wrong with the leadership culture of the United States....

      [H]e argues from organizational self-interest — never mind if it is right or wrong, the policy puts Scouting Inc. in a tough position, so best to abandon it. Duty to God and country? To heck with that — management always has its own priorities.

      Depending on your point of view, Gates is either doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason or doing the right thing for the wrong reason. ...

      That there are priorities above institutional self-interest is a proposition entirely alien to the bureaucratic soul, and Gates’s tenure at the Pentagon is testament to that. ,,,

      With the Marine Corps or the Boy Scouts of America, the question of what is good is not necessarily the same as the question of what is good for the organization. But you’d need a different sort of man than Robert Gates to discern that distinction, and a better sort of man to act on it.


      His point is that

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    6. Strike that vestigial "His point is that" from the foregoing. The quotes speak for themselves.

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    7. Sorry, Pik, Kevin Williamson swings and misses on this one. Gates is head of a national BSA and his job is nothing other than seeing to that organization's self-interest as he, as its leader, sees it. It's not Gates' job to pursue some extra-organizational self-interest Platonic or Christian good so that Kevin Williamson can feel better. Is Gates making the wrong bureaucratic, organizational self-interest decision? Sure, but Williamson isn't making that argument, he's only sneering that Gates is functioning as a craven, self-interested bureaucrat - "I vaz only following orders" - in the face of an existential evil which should be obvious to everyone and which Gates should oppose for Williamson's sake as much as for the BSA's. In doing that Williamson is taking the less confrontational, oblique, passive-aggressive road, rather than assuming the risks that come with directly saying Gates is nuts for caving to gay scoutmasters nationally.

      What I keep trying to point out and failing at is that there seems to be a little bit of Dreher everywhere these days, people wanting others to fight their battles for them. You can bet that National Review has gays in its employ, but Williamson is not going to make any kind of stand to root them out for the sake of ideological consistency and purity. He wants Gates, the teacher in the motel room, to take that stand.

      So Gates is doing what he's charged with: maintaining the BSA as a national movement as he deems best. That's his job description, whether he's doing it right or doing it wrong. But it doesn't mean the BSA must remain a national movement, doesn't mean local chapters cannot even still call themselves BSA while excluding gay scoutmasters and force national to sue them into schism.

      But all things of that latter sort require those with a stake in the game to fight their battles themselves, to keep their own pants up, not whine that the teacher didn't do it for them because the teacher has a decadent, bureaucratic moral character.

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    8. No, Keith, on both the constitutional point and on the Gates piece.

      We must remember that, not that long ago, the BSA pursued this very issue to the Supreme Court, and won there on the basis that they are an "expressive association", such that the 1st amendment protected their excluding of homosexual leaders -- despite the existence of state "public accommodation" laws. Sticking to its guns on this very matter would, virtually by definition, be "the most aggressive and constitutionally logical option available".

      So for the board (my first comment on this thread) and Gates to erode the very basis of that expression is akin to Wayne LaPierre of the NRA saying that mandatory gun registration is a good idea.

      As I mentioned above, the CEOs of AT&T and Ernst Young put their corporate interests ahead of the interests of BSA and its millions of members when they published op/ed pieces exhorting the full board to give in on this topic.

      And Gates' erosion of the very principle on which the organization fought for so many years is another capitulation, and ought to be called out as a bureaucratic toady as Williamson did. I'd grant you part of your point if the board had instructed Gates to make this statement (and if he had said so), but there is no indication that such is the case.

      The organization already chose this hill to die on. For the leadership to erode its own position on this issue*, especially without apparently consulting its own membership, is unconscionable surrender.

      *Especially on an issue that concerns safety (sexual abuse) that the Scouts already had to deal with, to much cost and loss of image.

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    9. But that wasn't the criticism I was leveling, Pik. Of course Gates was wrong. But Williamson was only arguing Gates was proceeding wrongly - or even conceivably rightly - in a unique and peculiar way: as a "bureaucratic mind" rather than as some idealized Charlemagne. Except that all one can really expect to find in large mass organizations like the BSA these days are bureaucratic managers. Williamson - not Gates:

      Not because Gates is taking a friendlier attitude toward homosexuals than his predecessors have. There is, in fact, an excellent moral argument to be made for the inclusion of homosexual adults in leadership positions within scouting — but Gates is not making that argument.

      Instead, he argues from organizational self-interest — never mind if it is right or wrong, the policy puts Scouting Inc. in a tough position, so best to abandon it. Duty to God and country? To heck with that — management always has its own priorities. Depending on your point of view, Gates is either doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason or doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

      So Williamson ends up faking it and ultimately pulling his punches in several ways, all damaging. First - my essential critique - he makes the specious aesthetic argument that Gates' suit is too gray and too flannel, which leaves Williamson looking like he's just looking for a fresh angle to write from, or trying to indict Gates without actually having to indict what Gates is doing, either or both of which makes Williamson cynically look like he's only trying to see what will stick against Gates without having to come out and explicitly say he, Williamson, believes the BSA should not employ homosexuals. In fact, the two paragraphs I quoted above contradict one another with respect to any potential contention by Williamson that Gates' sin was admitting homosexuality into scouting.

      To the faithful, already in the choir, it probably doesn't make any difference how Williamson expresses himself, but to those on the margins who might potentially be persuaded by argument, Williamson's cynical parsing and hedging and eliding of the core argument itself - that is, are you nuts? Gays in the BSA? - looks clueless at best, arbitrarily bigoted at worst, and thus dismissable.

      Keep in mind I referred to Williamson myself as the one person who seemed to have the insight to reach down to the fundamental level and pull out freedom of association as the ultimate right and value on which all culture war issues ultimately turn. He's usually very, very good. Here, though, he only seems to me to be lazily trying to throw Gates to the wolves without taking any risk of staking himself or NRO to the same value he elliptically tries to indict Gates for abrogating.

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    10. Charles C. W. Cooke has a similarly abstracted salon drawing room rumination grounded in a big, wet sloppy kiss for Dreher; because this jeweler's tale has been so widely reported, the only reason Cooke is hat-tipping Dreher is because of some personal fondness for him.

      But, you see, never mind that the entire incident occurred in Canada, against the background of Canadian anti-hate law and legal precedents, because the real world for real Americans isn't the point. The pearl-clutching point is that look how dreadful these lesbians would be if we all suddenly, magically went belly up like that Canadian jeweler. Why, I would feel almost as badly as I would if I suddenly whipped out my Benchmade and cut my own scrotum free! But neither is remotely likely to happen. (Erin Manning has an even nonnier non-post on the jeweler in which her entire assault is to guess what the comments to Dreher's post might end up being.)

      Interestingly, and to his credit Cooke sidles past the same freedom of association territory and goes so far as to point out its assymetry as applied to buyer versus seller, but never deeper. Instead, he, too, like Dreher, is content to traffic only in aesthetic arguments unencumbered by real world realities and responsibilities.

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    11. For any still under the misapprehension that Canada is just a colder U. S. filled with somewhat nicer people who say "Ehh?" a lot, two articles pointing out how freedom of expression (and thus limits on freedom of religion) differ pathologically in Canada than as protected under our Bill of Rights:

      http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/a-alan-borovoy-still-no-clarity-over-what-constitutes-hate-speech-in-canada

      http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/canadas-law-on-hate-speech-is-the-embodiment-of-compromise/article22520419/

      When pundits, and I see Hot Air has followed Cooke in uncritically following Dreher, use examples from Canada or the UK in claims about U. S. culture war issues, what they are effectively doing whether they intend to or not is to tacitly insinuate Drehery surrender into the conversation: "Look at how mean those gays are. But what can we do? You saw what happened to that jeweler in Canada. This is why the Benedict Option is our only hope. Because we are all passive, slavish Christians like Rod Dreher, and if we don't strategically retreat to our Cozy Corners to cultivate our Christian values while watching Caddyshack and writing books for Judith Regan, the Teacher will let them pull our pants down - or worse!"

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    12. Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on Gates, Keith.

      IMO, giving a pass to Gates because "he's a bureaucrat, what do you expect?" is the easy way out. Gates is certainly in a policy-setting role and not as merely (if at all) a day-to-day operational role -- that's why they named a notable like Gates for the role of "National President (Volunteer)".

      So either he or the board (through him) are undermining a hard-fought policy position of the organization. And yes, because that policy position was so hard-fought, it ought to either be changed because it's the right thing to do, or defended because it's the right thing to do. The definition of Scouting is the development of young men through the application of values, including these values. To erode the message merely because it is now just too much trouble to defend the underlying values (indeed, to defend the right to itself define its values) is indeed a cop-out.

      Gates is mirroring Pontius Pilate here IMO, trying to get someone else to make the tough decision so as to avoid trouble for the organization.

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    13. Pik, once again, and to take your words out of my mouth, I wasn't giving Gates a pass - reread these words Of course Gates was wrong. - I was criticizing Williamson's subtle non-indictment of Gates' wrongness, the sort of evasion that only serves to cultivate rather than combat the sort of Dreherian existential helplessness so many other social conservatives appear to be content with.

      One doesn't argue against the inclusion of homosexual adults in leadership positions within scouting by saying

      There is, in fact, an excellent moral argument to be made for the inclusion of homosexual adults in leadership positions within scouting — but Gates is not making that argument.

      Instead, he argues from organizational self-interest...


      That's only head-fake slop designed to satisfy those who want to read something negative about Gates - anything, doesn't matter what; 'heard Gates sold us out, what does KW say?' - while giving an explicit pass to the very thing Gates was supposed to have done wrong.

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    14. Believe me, Keith, I understand what you're saying. I just think you're shooting the messenger for writing a different article from one which you would have written on the subject, and so I disagree with you.

      And no, the piece is not Dreherian helplessness IMO. He's not calling on others to do anything in his place, he's instead pointing to a different problem -- indeed the same problem that the Charles Murray book points to, namely the bureaucratization of life in these United States -- by providing a window into the bureaucratic mind.

      My take is similar to his, but from a different angle, in that Gates is eroding an important if not defining principle for the sake of operational convenience.

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    15. One thing to keep in mind about BSA is that it is militaristic in its organization. I have a hard time seeing a lot of insubordination in the serious members on issues dictated higher up in the chain of command.

      If you attain the rank of Eagle Scout there are perks if you join the military, at least in the Marines from what I've heard. You can get promoted faster, for example. Thus there is at least this one formal connection between scouts and military branches and there are probably many informal ones. Our military is in the process of going full-out pro-gay and so there is pressure on the BSA to do it as well.

      I took my kids out of scouting but it wasn't really because of this but due to a number of factors, and I'm talking probably a 2-digit number. It would take about 2 hours to explain it, but suffice to say it could all go under the heading of "family dynamics".

      People who have their kids in scouting are a mixed bag in my experience. Right now I'm having a serious personality conflict with someone who is very gung ho for scouting and he seems to have a serious worker-bee complex and a problem with anyone with higher aspirations.

      So this isn't really a left-right thing, but you just watch. There are a bunch of people on the left who have been boycotting the BSA heretofore who are going to start joining one it goes all rainbow-colored. I have good friends who are completely in denial about this but as Dennis Prager always says, "the left ruins everything it touches." And it is definitely touching the boy scouts right now.

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    16. Yes, Pik, damn right I am absolutely shooting the messenger,

      Williamson says,

      Not because Gates is taking a friendlier attitude toward homosexuals than his predecessors have. There is, in fact, an excellent moral argument to be made for the inclusion of homosexual adults in leadership positions within scouting — but Gates is not making that argument.

      Instead, he argues from organizational self-interest — never mind if it is right or wrong, the policy puts Scouting Inc. in a tough position, so best to abandon it. Duty to God and country? To heck with that — management always has its own priorities.


      At least that's what Williamson says Gates is saying. Here's what Gates actually said in its entirety; listen or read.

      Here's the pertinent excerpt; it's still long: (continues)

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    17. Gates at the BSA, excerpt:

      Finally, let me address membership policy.

      I told you a year ago that I would oppose re-opening this issue during my two-year term as president of the BSA. I had hoped then for a respite during which we could focus on healing our divisions from the 2013 decision [admitting gay Scouts; Gates became president in May, 2014-Keith], improving our program, strengthening our finances and ending our decline in membership.

      However, events during the past year have confronted us with urgent challenges I did not foresee and which we cannot ignore. We cannot ignore growing internal challenges to our current membership policy, from some councils -like the Greater New York Council, the Denver Area Council, and others -in open defiance of the policy, to more and more councils taking a position in their mission statements and public documents contrary to national policy.

      Nor can we ignore the social, political and juridicial changes taking place in our country -changes taking place at a pace over this past year no one anticipated. I remind you of the recent debates we have seen in places like Indiana and Arkansas over discrimination based on sexual orientation, not to mention the impending U.S. Supreme Court decision this summer on gay marriage.

      I am not asking the national board for any action to change our current policy at this meeting. But I must speak as plainly and bluntly to you as I spoke to Presidents when I was Director of CIA and Secretary of Defense. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be. The status quo in our movement's membership standards cannot be sustained.[My emphasis-Keith]
      (continues)

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    18. We can expect more councils to openly challenge the current policy. While technically we have the authority to revoke their charters, such an action would deny the lifelong benefits of scouting to hundreds of thousands of boys and young men today and vastly more in the future. I will not take that path.

      Moreover, dozens of states -from New York to Utah -are passing laws that protect employment rights on the basis of sexual orientation. Thus, between internal challenges and potential legal conflicts, the BSA finds itself in an unsustainable position. A position that makes us vulnerable to the possibility the courts simply will order us at some point to change our membership policy. We must all understand that this probably will happen sooner rather than later.
      In 2010, a federal district judge in California overturned the military's don't ask, don't tell law and the reversal was applied nationwide immediately. Only a stay granted by the appeals court -granted, I believe, mainly because we were in the process of changing the law -prevented dramatic disruption in the armed forces.

      We cannot predict if or when this might happen to us, but I personally believe our legal defenses have weakened since the Dale case. And if we wait for the courts to act, we could end up with a broad ruling that could forbid any kind of membership standard, including our foundational belief in our duty to god and our focus on serving the specific needs of boys. Waiting for the courts is a gamble with huge stakes.[My emphasis-Keith]

      Alternatively, we can move at some future date-but sooner rather than later -to seize control of our own future, set our own course and change our policy in order to allow charter partners-unit sponsoring organizations -to determine the standards for their scout leaders. Such an approach would allow all churches, which sponsor some 70% of our scout units, to establish leadership standards consistent with their faith. We must, at all costs, preserve the religious freedom of our church partners to do this.[My emphasis-Keith]
      (continues)

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    19. Our oath calls upon us to do our duty to God and our country. The country is changing and we are increasingly at odds with the legal landscape at both the state and federal levels. And, as a movement, we find ourselves with a policy more than a few of our church sponsors reject -thus placing scouting between a boy and his church.

      The challenges are before us now. The executive committee, the national executive board and our legal counsel will work to determine our responses and our best strategy. We want and value your thoughts on all this, recognizing the importance of protecting our core values.

      The one thing we cannot do is put our heads in the sand and pretend this challenge will go away or abate. Quite the opposite is happening.

      I know my remarks on this subject unsettle many of you. Some of you might be angry that I raise this subject and with what I have said. But this movement shaped my life and my only purpose -my only reason for assuming this leadership role -is to preserve the Boy Scouts of America in recognition of all it has done for this country, and all it can and must do in the future. Scouting is needed in this country now more than ever.

      I assure you that I have no hidden agenda. I want only to apprise you of the new reality I see: that both internal and external events and pressures over the past year and looking to the future will require action at some point.

      For now, I ask that, in the days and months ahead, everyone here reflect and pray on our path forward. We can act on our own or we can be forced to act but, either way, I suspect we don't have a lot of time.


      As opposed to the throwaway soul of a pundit with no responsibilities, one happy to say out the outset that there's "an excellent moral argument to be made for the inclusion of homosexual adults in leadership positions within scouting", there, above, is Gates' "soul of a bureaucrat", in the aftermath of the 2013 decision before his tenure to admit gay Scouts themselves, advising the national BSA to strategically consider sacrificing the 30% or less of councils already wanting to admit gay leaders in order to preserve a national organization in which that 70% or more of Christian councils can choose not to.

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    20. I'll stand corrected, Keith. I should have read Gates' comments first -- sorry to have put you to such work. Certainly Gates put more thought in it than was portrayed by Kevin Williamson.

      On the larger question of whether Gates is right, the problem will still arise where the gay provacateur will choose one of the "traditional" troops or councils to join, in bad faith (ala pizza shop, bakery, and florist examples), in which case the Gates approach will necessarily fail -- because as we know the agenda is not about joining the Scouts but about destroying the last bastions of objective Truth. Once the BSA goes Pilate on the question, then the traditional organizations will have even less armor to defend against the attack ("See, National BSA doesn't exclude -- it's just you bigots in Catholic churches who exclude."). National will have let themselves off the hook, tho. This is still the problem I have with the idea, but there may in fact be no other way out of this.

      P.S. To Pauli's point, my experience was different from "militaristic". The gestalt of the troop is defined largely by the scoutmaster (and to a lesser extent by the troop committee) -- we didn't see a lot of influence from the council except for its providing of camps, camporees, and other events (which ours was pretty good about). Of course that means that everyone's mileage will vary widely, depending on the particular unit. It's all about the local volunteers.

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    21. Yeah, Gates' is at best only a stopgap least bad option. There are no magic beans, no Emperor's New Benedict Option Clothes. And my own instinct was to break directly into local private alternatives to a national BSA organization.

      Rahm Emmanuel isn't the only one to find opportunity in crisis. Parasites like Dreher and other peddlers of magic, low-cost, low-impact potions typically start coming out of the woodwork in situations like this, because everyone wants an effortless fix and, hey, they've got it, in a slick package with a catchy name.

      If it seems easy, if "everyone is talking about it", chances are that "it"'s at ground zero of either the scheme of the latest opportunity hustler or the eager dupe of one.

      To be frank with you, when Googling Rod Dreher Benedict Option these days I'm almost becoming more interested in the courtiers interested in wanting to be seen as hip to "this Benedict Option that everyone is talking about" than I am in one more Drehery "Dante-is-oysters-is-the-Benedict-Option-it's-all-connected-to-sales-for-me" post.

      And the not-buying-it Toms continue to stand out for their rarity. Sadly, Christian conservatism is no more naturally immune to wanna-belong herding than any other chunk of humanity.

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    22. Oy. Father Longnecker just succumbed. I'm disappointed.

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    23. Pauli, if I'm not mistaken, Father Longenecker has been a fan of Dreher's for some time, commenting on his blog, etc.

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    24. Allow me as the resident non-Catholic to point out something else rather obvious. Having read Father Longenecker's Patheos piece you linked, unlike a case like, say, the attack on Memories Pizza, nominal Catholics may no longer be attending his masses, not necessarily because they've been killed by barbarians, gay or otherwise, just out of sight over the hill, but rather for other reasons, including the inglorious one of Father Longenecker himself needing some additional improvement in delivering masses that attract Catholics despite themselves.

      Even in times of great turmoil a bogeyman and a Final Solution may not always be the explanation and answer to everything. Just saying.

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  4. Meanwhile, some variation of this most excellent pre-emptive apology from actor Chris Pratt should be printed on t-shirts:

    I want to make a heartfelt apology for whatever it is I end up accidentally saying during the forthcoming ‪#‎JurassicWorld‬ press tour. I hope you understand it was never my intention to offend anyone and I am truly sorry. I swear. I’m the nicest guy in the world. And I fully regret what I (accidentally will have) said in (the upcoming foreign and domestic) interview(s).

    I am not in the business of making excuses. I am just dumb. Plain and simple. I try. I REALLY try! When I do (potentially) commit the offensive act for which I am now (pre) apologizing you must understand I (will likely have been) tired and exhausted when I (potentially) said that thing I (will have had) said that (will have had) crossed the line. Those rooms can get stuffy and the hardworking crews putting these junkets together need some entertainment! (Likely) that is who I was trying to crack up when I (will have had) made that tasteless and unprofessional comment. Trust me. I know you can’t say that anymore. In fact in my opinion it was never right to say the thing I definitely don’t want to but probably will have said. To those I (will have) offended please understand how truly sorry I already am. I am fully aware that the subject matter of my imminent forthcoming mistake, a blunder (possibly to be) dubbed “JurassicGate” is (most likely) in no way a laughing matter. To those I (will likely have had) offended rest assured I will do everything in my power to make sure this doesn’t happen (again).

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  5. Slightly off topic ... But if you are following the Duggar thing: One of the Patheos bloggers made the point that it is it's neither feasible nor healthy to over-shelter kids from the big bad world. This was one of her many excellent observations, but it struck me as rather pertinent to the BO. Linkie later.

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    1. I'm sure the demons whispered support for the hatred in the hearts of the LGBT activists, and for whatever moral and legal crimes may have followed from that hatred.

      But the Duggars only had the money to become targets of the activists because of the fraud they chose to perpetrate about the wholesomeness and godliness of their way of life.

      And what the hell is wrong with Steve Lancaster? Josh Duggar's sexual assaults against his young sisters were the "indiscretions" of "a 14 year old boy, with raging hormones"? No, for the love of Christ in his victims, they were criminal acts of grave evil.

      Plenty of evidence has come to light since 2002 that, when people are faced with the fact of child abuse, they act irrationally. We read what bishops decided to do, we read what Joe Paterno decided to do, and we can't believe that anyone could do that. But the closer it gets to a person, the more it would cost him to face up to what has happened, the more likely it is that he won't.

      Hence, Jim Bob Duggar's decision to toss his daughters on the pyre. Hence Steve Lancaster's decision to call a grave sexual evil committed by one of US indiscreet in a post decrying the spread of THEM's grave sexual evils.

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    2. I have no more interest in the Duggars than I do in the Kardashians.

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    3. What Tom said.

      Pauli, I am not interested in the Duggars in se, but this whole molestation case has blown open a huge, huge problem in contemporary American fundamentalism. More later. It's a huge topic. But Tom has raised the key issues, I think.

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    4. Tom or Diane, do you have a link to reporting on what the underlying crime was and how it was handled by the police etc.? I've only seen broad brush characterizations that range from teenage hormones to serious and horrible things.

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    5. A cursory read of the issue contradicts some of what Tom is insinuating; Josh Duggar's own father actually turned him in to the police, unlike Joe Paterno and others. Then there was some botched investigation and the statute of limitations kicked in, etc.

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    6. Pauli, Jim Bob waited a full year before contacting the authorities. Then he contacted only a family friend at (I believe) the state police. Said family friend was a mandatory reporter, yet he never reported anything to his superiors. Instead, he just gave Josh a stern talking-to. Later, the family friend / state trooper was convicted himself, for possession of child pornography, and he is now serving a 54-year sentence.

      The redacted police report is quite damning. The full (unredacted) report, alas, is scheduled to be destroyed (judge's order) at the behest of the youngest victim, who is still a minor. (Meaning she had to have been no more than four or five when she was victimized, BTW.) How much you wanna bet Jim Bob was the one who pressured the kid to ask the judge to have the full police report destroyed?

      This whole thing stinks to High Heaven.

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    7. OK, I stand corrected. I just glanced at a point summary in the Guardian. I will say that several times tv-watchers, one of which I am not, have told my wife and I that we should be on a reality show "like the Duggars" to which I always respond "I don't think so."

      This seems to be the worst publicity for large families possible, and ultimately the main beneficiaries are large media companies. Everyone else loses unless they are very, very lucky.

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    8. Oh, I agree.

      The Duggars arguably went a tad over the top with the large-family thing, and I am not knocking large families by any remote stretch, believe me. But they eschewed NFP and even spacing-by-breastfeeding as Evil and Worldly and Papist. I know an Earth Mother type who spaced her kids via breastfeeding; if you do it diligently and produce enough milk, the baby-spacing just kind of happens, naturally...or at least it did in her case. But the Duggars apparently thought even this was off-limits. That is just a tad weird IMHO.

      My grandparents AFAIK used no ABC. One set had six kids (plus several miscarriages). The other had seven (even though the dad died young). Neither managed to get up to 19 and counting.

      Again, not knocking it, but...if there's any situation that more than justifies NFP or "ecological breastfeeding," it's 19 kids, IMHO. Among other things, it's kind of hard on the oldest daughters, who serve as moms / nannies / indentured servants. For another thing, how many families could afford it?

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    9. I wasn't thinking the father not turning in the son was irrational. I was thinking the father letting the molester of his daughters live in the same house with them was irrational.

      I don't have any particular links to recommend; there was an article in the paper the other morning, and I've come across various things on the Internet. The facts don't seem to be in much dispute, it's their characterization that varies wildly.

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    10. OK, here's a link to the redacted police report. Read and decide for yourself.

      This discussion seems to be similar to the "torture" discussion we had some time ago, in which we argue over an overly broad term (e.g. "sexual assault") while having different things in mind.

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  6. Instapundit points to mass opt-outs of Common Core tests as an early example of civil disobedience, By the People-style.

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